A 2016 @stratlab Year in Review

Those who think they can change Regina are the ones who do. -@Stratlab, 2016

What a year it was! The StratLab Fam had some ups and downs but all in all it was a stellar year! We said goodbye to Miranda, Jeremy, and Braedon. With a big smile we welcomed to the team Anastas, Brooke, Addison, and Marc. Whether it was some amazing new non-profts we got to work with, the visits to Fort McMurray before and after the fires, or hosting another wildly awesome Big Idea Camp, it was a another fun filled year.
Some New stickers, some old ones too!

A few amazing trips to Fort McMurray for Brandon, Eddy and Jeph this year. A horrible tragedy but an amazing community rebuilding itself. A month after the fire Layers Wellness held a “Wild Fire” party, to celebrate the community that wasn’t broken, only made stronger.

Anastas started working with us full time. I’ll never forget the first staff meeting as we went around the room discuss what each of us was “learning” this month. Anastas wanted to learn logo design. As jerk in the meeting of course I wanted to know more! So I asked “Oh you want to learn logo design? How are you going to do that?” he replies quick as a whip, “I don’t know, I’ll just cut out some time on the weekend and watch YouTube videos about it.” Wow. So that’s the future, whatever you want to learn, and I mean WHATEVER you want to learn, just cut out some time on the weekend and watch YouTube videos. Kind of a brilliant strategy.

Here’s one of his videos below. We filmed at the Walter Scott building in Moose Jaw several times, from Drone shots to a spinning walk down the stairs. We had enough footage to put together two teaser videos and then a final video that helped rent 34 of 40 apartments simply marketing the videos on Facebook this past Summer. It was pretty incredible.

The best out take of the video was a Morgan Freeman voice-over we bought on Fiverr. It was AMAZING! But because of many reason we didn’t use Mr. Freeman’s voice.

We got our first American client! Brandon and Jeph were off to Portland in August to work with an Engineering firm. Yes we tried VooDoo Donuts and a bunch of other “Purple Cow” experiences (Jeph wrote about it here) , including renting the “Nike” bikes along with the girlfriends and touring around downtown Portland!

Big Idea Camp was amazing. 4 Days, 13 corporate partners, two teams of eight and a week of priceless memories. Some highlights were:

The SnapChat Scavenger Hunt

Ryan teaching me how to use Photoshop better (it was incredible! We all have so much to learn from students)

Financial Friday was sponsored by Conexus Credit Union (See the video below), they got to present their ideas to the executive leadership team at Conexus including the CEO Eric Dillan

Using “Tinder for picking your financial advisor” was an idea one group came up with that made the room burst with laughter.

At the end Eric Dillon gave every student his business card and told them to email him when they’re done school if they wanted a job. Wow.

Big Idea Camp also raised 3,330 Diapers in 24 hours for Carmichael Outreach, it was an amazing and a pretty cool first challenge the Big Idea Campers did.

The Great Canadian Pulse Off, the pulse of a country in the heart of the nation.

In the fall we had the pleasure of working with Economic Development Regina on the “Great Canadian Pulse Off”, a week long National celebration of Pulse production in Canada. We got to do “guerrilla pulsing” downtown, at the University and in restaurants. Basically just asking questions about Pulses and gave away giftcards and Pulse products. By the end of the week we did feel like Hank from King of the Hill and his constant mention of propane, but obviously for us it was Pulses.

Brooke started working with us full time. She’s awesome, she brings a different marketing perspective to the StratLab team, she has a psychology background so its fascinating to get Brooke’s opinion on marketing ideas and trends. I think she’s going to do big things, already taking clients of her own on.

Mismatched Mittens got some press, the teaching of entrepreneurship is evolving and it’s pretty amazing to see what students can do when they are allowed to be creative. We also got to donate $885 in proceeds to the #imaginenobullying Redcross campaign. In 2017 Jeph will be teaching Social Media Marketing at the Hill School of Business at the University of Regina.

We found out Braedon, who’s been with us since the beginning, will no longer be a stratlabber as of the end of December. Braedons a great guy, we had a lot of fun together. But as a small company’s growing you’re going to mess up here and there, I will always look fondly on the time we had together.

We got to work with some pretty cool new clients this year. Family Service Regina, Sunroof Solar, Tourism Regina, Bayer Cropscience, Habitual Sports in Fort McMurray, an engineering firm in Portland Oregon, Eden Care Communities, and the University of Regina student recruitment.

Addison Dockerty started working with us part time. He’s an amazing guy, I can’t wait to learn more from him in the future. He does website design, coaches, and some marketing.

We became a “4 to 40” employer in December. Marc started working with us as helping out with seo, photography and videography. So far Marc’s been great! Check out his first blog post here: Welcome to the @StratLab office. We have big plans for Marc, he’s going to really make our video and photo department much more creative and productive.